


these cold immortal hands

by alienbabe (molotovgirl)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, It's 3AM, death & undeath, kylo being haunted relentlessly, v emotional
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-03
Updated: 2016-01-03
Packaged: 2018-05-11 10:10:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5623498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/molotovgirl/pseuds/alienbabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks putting a lightsaber through her ribcage might shut her up. How wrong he is. AU where Rey just won't seem to die, and Kylo's being driven mad by the ghosts of his past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	these cold immortal hands

**Author's Note:**

> so basically it's 3 am and i'm Human Garbage and all i want is tragic fanfiction so

_Pale, beyond porch and portal_

_Crowned with calm leaves, she stands_

_Who gathers all things mortal_

_With cold immortal hands_

 

 

She dies on her knees. It's just as he had sworn weeks ago in the destroyed interrogation room of Starkiller Base––Kylo Ren kills Rey the scavenger before the foolhardy girl gets a second chance to take him out. The Force is strong within her, far too strong for a scrappy girl from the wastelands of Jakku. He can feel it leaving her body as he thrusts his saber through her heart. She had been standing, lightsaber raised to fend off his blows, but she sinks slowly to her knees as that crimson beam of energy burns through her. Rey raises her eyes to meet his, a pair of bright planets in the darkness, and he sees the way the light leaves them. Kylo can tell when she's dead, the jolt that runs through him sends him reeling backwards, his saber falling from suddenly numb fingertips. It clatters to the red rocks beneath his feet, the deadly beam zapping off. Rey is slumped at his feet, her mortal wound hidden by the soft folds of her grey garments. One of her buns has come loose, and her dark hair is spilled over one freckled shoulder. She looks small in death. 

Kylo is seized by a feeling so sudden and desperate that his breath catches in his chest and swells there, a bloom of overwhelming sadness. He cannot stand to look at her anymore. And anyway, her Resistance friends will be here soon, that traitor Stormtrooper and his cocky pilot friend. He decides that he will leave her body here for them, untouched. They will bury her, he thinks, and mourn her. He will grant them that dignity. He tells himself that she is useless to him now, and he turns his eyes away from her. What good is a dead rebel to anyone? 

 

He cannot erase the image of her eyes––like twin planets succumbing to a black hole––from his memory. 

 

 

* * *

 

She comes to him first in dreams. He has, for the most part, lost track of how much time has passed since her death. This is, he insists, due to the absolute insignificance of her death and not because he has forcefully cleansed his mind of all things related to the little scavenger. He can no longer sleep without seeing her ghostly figure, mostly in the form of violent replays of their final duel. This time, however, the dream changes. This is not simply a memory. They are standing beside each other on a high black cliff overlooking an endless grey sea. The horizon line is sharp as a knife, and a cold wind whips through Rey's hair. It stirs the brown tendrils beside her temples and Kylo forces himself to look away. 

 _Isn't it beautiful?_ The question is a surprise to him––Rey is generally a silent character in these dreams. Even in the moment before her death, she had refused to beg for her life. 

 _Yes,_ he answers truthfully.  _This isn't where you come from._

She laughs, a high delicate sound.  _No,_ she says.  _It's not. You'll never know where this is._

He knows then that it's someplace important, and the idea that she is keeping it from him should be infuriating, but the cliffs and the sea have filled him with a strange sense of calm. 

 _It won't be long,_ she says, the words almost lost to the wind. 

He tries to ask  _until what?_ but suddenly he is jerking awake with a searing pain in his chest, right above his heart. 

 

 

It's not long until she begins to haunt his dreams nightly. Sometimes she takes him back to the cliff by the sea, other times to the deserts of Jakku. Then it becomes the desolate planet where she died, where she stands eerily over her own dead body and stares at him. 

 _You fantasized about it,_ she says.  _About me on my knees, begging for my life._

It's true, he knows. The hours he'd spent hunched in front of his grandfather's ruined helmet, vowing to the Dark that he would kill Rey and defeat the Resistance. His words seem hollow now––clearly enraged by Rey's death, the Resistance had rained attacks on First Order bases and starships, killing thousands and destroying valuable weapons and intelligence centers. He had been so blinded by his own rage that he had not considered the possibility that they would make her a martyr. 

 _They idolize you,_ he muses.  _A little scavenger girl from Jakku._

She smirks.  _I'm more than that. I was the heart of the Resistance. I was going to be a Jedi. To them, I was hope._

The words are sentimental enough to anger him. 

 _And I killed you,_ he growls.  _I thought putting my saber through your heart would shut you up._

And Rey is smiling at him, her eyes wrinkling at the corners. 

 _Yes,_ she says.  _Yes, Kylo Ren, you did._

 

* * *

 

He finds that he cannot sleep for fear of seeing her again. The scant moments of rest he does lapse into are plagued by her voice, her eyes. He spends longer hours in the First Order war rooms, plotting attacks against rebel bases and pushing General Hux to deploy more Stormtroopers in search of Luke Skywalker. However, he has developed the terrifying notion––an inkling that grows bigger and bigger each time he sees Rey's smirking face in his dreams––that the First Order's efforts are fruitless. He turns to his grandfather, practically praying to the dented piece of armor. 

"Please, Grandfather," he murmurs, his shoulders hunched, hands pressed to the raised dias that the helmet sits on. "Show me again the power of the Darkness, turn me against the Light." 

_He won't answer, you know._

The sound of her voice sends his rocketing backwards, nearly falling off his chair. Kylo Ren lurches to his feet, spinning to locate the source of her lilting accent. She's standing maybe ten feet in front of him, arms at her sides. What troubles him is how  _clear_ she looks, with none of the blurry edges of her dream-self. 

"Are you real?" He demands stupidly, and he's reaching for his saber before he realizes that it's out of its sheath, lying across the room next to Vader's helmet. She laughs. 

"You're afraid of me," she says, crossing the room towards him. "You won't even close your eyes for fear of seeing me." 

"That's not true," he snaps. It takes all his courage not to back away from her. She draws closer and his breath catches in his throat. She looks so  _real_ , all of her. Tanned limbs and grey fabric and he swears that he can count the freckles on her cheeks. She smells like the desert, like dry wind and heat and something he can't quite place, something green. 

"You're dead," he tells her, his voice rising, and he tries to suppress a growing sensation of panic. He felt the Force leaving her body, he felt that sickening jolt when––oh god. Someone from long ago––from another lifetime––had warned him that sometimes people's Forces could be intertwined, connected by a somehow shared destiny. He had been certain that the Dark side had erased the possibility of him being in any way  _spiritually connected_ to another but now...now he questions it. In a moment of sheer, impulsive panic, he summons his saber and brings it humming to life with a flick of his wrist. 

"If you are alive," he says, advancing on her. "You won't be for very long." 

And he thrusts the beam of his saber through the middle of her chest. 

It does nothing. The beam of deadly energy passes through her as if her form has been sewn together with sea mist and smoke. 

"Kylo Ren," she says. "That lightsaber of yours will be the death of you." 

* * *

 

He thinks he is going mad. She haunts him, ghostlike, at every moment. Sleep has become impossible, he cannot even close his eyes without her appearing in the blackness behind his eyelids. His waking hours are no better; he swears that he can see her out of the corner of his eye near-constantly. Hux questions his increasingly obvious paranoia, and Kylo cannot bring himself to admit that the little scavenger has taken up permanent residence in his brain. When the General asks if he's alright and Kylo brushes the query off with growing anger, he swears that he can hear Rey laughing at him. Her constant presence has lead to him abandoning his quasi-worship of Vader's helmet––he has in fact avoided the room where he keeps the relic for fear of another visit from Rey. 

 

He nearly prostrates himself at Snoke's feet, fearful that his master will somehow sense the girl's omnipresence. His subservience goes unnoticed. 

"I thought you killed the girl," Snoke growls, and Kylo cannot disguise the horror he feels. "She is here, I can sense it.  _You_ have brought her here." 

Kylo has become desperate. "Please, master," he begs. "Show me how to rid myself of this ghost." 

Snoke actually laughs, and the sound is extremely disturbing, like something wet squelching through a cave. Kylo tries not to cringe at the sound. 

"Ghost?" His voice is condescending at best. "You are weak, Kylo Ren. You allowed the girl to manipulate you, to use your own Force against you. Your own arrogance will be your downfall, Knight of Ren." 

A punishment unusually cruel, even for Snoke, follows, and Kylo limps back to his quarters with newly-raised welts across his back and chest. He beats one fist against his side dutifully, and the shocks of pain running through his body bring him back to the Darkness. When she comes to him––and she always does––he promises that he will be ready. 

 

* * *

 

"They hurt you," Rey observes. He has not undressed so Kylo assumes that either she has developed some kind of after-death x-ray vision or she was somehow present during his punishment. 

"Pain is a physical manifestation of the powers of the Dark," he snarls, pounding a fisted hand against his aching side. "I must embrace it." 

Something crosses Rey's face like a shadow, and he thinks for one glaringly uncomfortable moment that it might be pity. She comes to stand before him, far too close, and he tries to pull himself away but oh god those eyes, they look like free-falling through the pinwheel of space. 

"Come," she says. "I will show you the Light." 

It's something he cannot explain, the sensation of being pulled backwards into someone else's mind. What's even more terrifying is that  _she_ draws him in; like an ebbing tide controlled by a distant moon, he is powerless against her. 

Again they stand on the rocky cliff and his chest is full of something as endless and pale grey as the sea that unfurls beneath them. Fractures of memory come back: a huddle of low stone buildings, practice dueling with wooden sabers, sitting crosslegged on a cool floor. This sensation––the Light. It is burning him from the inside out, like a collapsing planet. 

"Make it stop!" He cries out, raising a hand as if to Force-choke her. But Rey is standing beside him in a calm and radiant beauty, untouchable. He realizes then that he cannot hurt her. She has given herself wholly to the Light while he hovers in a terrible half-life in a chasm between the endless void and the sun. 

"Look at you," she says quietly, and her voice is full of sharp things. "Tell me Kylo Ren: does it hurt?" 

It is, in fact, the most blinding pain he's ever experienced. It as if he is being torn apart. 

"Nothing hurts," he growls, and he wants nothing more than to force her violently from his head. "Nothing could." 

And she is coming closer to him, so close he can  _feel_ her, and she is raising a hand to his chest. His hand comes up automatically, grabbing her wrist, and his entire body explodes in searing pain. 

 

And then nothing. Pale, still serenity. There is no pain, only something calm and centered. A stone in the water, radiating ripples. He has felt this before––sitting with his legs folded beneath him, eyes closed...another lifetime. 

"Come back to the Light, Ben Solo." 

And then everything is rushing towards blackness and he collapses at her feet. 

* * *

 

 

Snoke can smell it on him––the betrayal. It must hang around him like an unshakable cloud. 

"You have felt the Light again," Snoke says. His voices echoes through the dank underground chamber, as eerie as his gargantuan projection. "How did it feel, Knight of Ren, to betray your order?" 

Kylo feels his stomach twist. He longs for a brutal whipping, to be strung up on a rack, to be punished and subjugated until he must be reminded of his name. 

"I am loyal only to the Dark," he pledges, but the words taste bitter on his tongue. "I am loyal to the First Order." 

Snoke considers him. "You have felt an awakening, Kylo Ren. An awakening of the Light within you. The Knights of Ren did their best to conquer that rebellious streak, but I think there is perhaps a drop too much of your  _father's_ blood. Your mother's too." 

Kylo tenses visibly, his insides burning with rage. He longs to take his saber into his hand, cut down Snoke's disgusting scarred visage and Rey's smirking ghost and the pair of faceless guards outside the chamber. 

"What is more," Snoke continues. If he can feel Kylo's blooming anger, he says nothing. "You have enjoyed your frolic on the Light side. You have succumbed to the temptation. Such things are a Jedi indulgence, as I'm sure you remember. Perhaps you have taken your uncle's lessons a bit too deeply to heart, Ben Solo." 

"Don't!" Kylo can hear himself snarling, as if through heavy glass. "Don't say that name in front of me!" 

"You are dismissed," Snoke rumbles, but Kylo is not listening. His pulse is pounding so loudly in his ears that his hearing has gone out. "The next time we speak I expect you to have purged yourself of this indulgent flirtation with the Light." 

 

Kylo leaves Snoke's chambers with the pit in his stomach quickly dissolving into something the size of a black hole. Snoke had known––still knows––of his transgression. He has disgraced the Knights of Ren, and is certain that it's only a matter of time before he is removed from his position with the First Order and marooned at an outpost on some distant planet. He will become someone mentioned in hushed whispers amongst new recruits––a failure of the highest degree. 

He does not turn away when Rey comes to him in his quarters. He can feel his own Force opening towards hers, like a flower turning its head towards the sunlight. He is disgusted by how easily she has destroyed him. 

She seems to know what he wants even before he does. He cannot discern how much time passes––or if any time passes at all––before they are standing face-to-face on the same rocky outcropping on which Rey died. 

"This is what you wanted, isn't it?" She asks, stepping towards him. "A second chance?" 

He almost laughs, it comes out something more like a whimper. "There are no second chances, little scavenger. Didn't your master teach you that?" 

She stares at him, her gaze is blinding that he has to look away. 

"That's not true, is it? You were born another man, with another name. You were born into the Light, Ben Solo." 

The use of his old name, so easy on her tongue, stabs through him in a sickening jolt. He can feel himself imploding, burning apart from the inside out. This, he knows, is what she wants. To see him suffer as she did. 

"You want the Light," she says, gliding closer to him. "You  _need_ it." 

He opens his mouth to speak but finds that his eyes are wet and his throat has gone dry. 

"Please," he whispers, and all he can think in that moment is how terribly he wants to fill the void inside himself before it consumes him. "Help me." 

She steps forwards again, eager and gentle. 

"Let me show you," she urges, and her voice is soft and full of rain. "Let me take you to the Light." 

He does not remember going to his knees, he does not remember handing her his saber. He opens his eyes and he is kneeling before Rey, his gaze lifted to meet hers. She is whole and radiant, simultaneously the most beautiful and terrible thing he has ever seen. The saber hums to life in her hands, her long fingers curled tightly around the grip. Something in her eyes has changed, like a solar eclipse, and he sees a momentary flash of something dark and vengeful. 

"This saber will be the death of you," she says, and he opens his mouth to say something––what, he doesn't know––and then she is swinging the saber down and the last and only thing he sees are those bright, bright eyes. 

 

* * *

 

 

They are standing side-by-side on a cliff overlooking the sea. The scene, painfully pastoral, shifts into focus like bandages have suddenly been removed from his eyes. He remembers this rocky isle from another time––when he ransacked Rey's memories in a spartan interrogation room––the green island and the sea and the birds wheeling high above them. She turns to look at him then, and her face comes into sharp relief. 

"That wasn't so bad, was it?" 

He thinks she's referring to the fact that she put a lightsaber through his ribs, but he can't remember any pain. He wonders if her death was as easy. 

"I'm dead, aren't I?" 

She gives him a sad, slow smile. 

"You've been dead a long time, Ben Solo." 

He looks at her, at her sweet clever face, and knows that in another lifetime their Forces would have been intertwined through something other than hatred. She reaches out and presses their palms together. He can feel the Force now, stronger than he's ever felt it, surging between them like a living thing. There's an ever-growing light expanding between them, something that makes the air crackle with the sharp smell of ozone. 

"Come with me," she says, and her voice is low and full of wonder. In the electric glow he can see a thousand lives past and future, and he knows that he can see her eyes in every one of them. 

 

He needs no further invitation. They turn together and walk into the light. 


End file.
